


In Passing

by hellkitty



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 07:30:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1217701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thing for hc-bingo mini challenge. Prompts were: insomnia, unforeseen consequences of a planned soulbonding, homesickness, and the wild card isolation.  </p>
<p>A little heavy on the Hurt, not so much on the Comfort, I'm afraid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Passing

Stacker couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept through a whole night. Maybe before the kaiju arrived. Maybe that was it.  
  
He just knew this feeling was all too familiar, lying in bed, feeling the thin sheet bunched and crumpled over his bare skin, as though every fold and contour was cutting into his skin. They’d told him that tactile hypersensitivity was part of the radiation sickness, a trace he’d bear for the rest of his life, like an invisible scar, from his time in Coyote Tango.

He sighed, blinking up at the darkness, where he could see the low ceiling of the shatterdome’s plain panels. He could guess where the ventilation would be from long experience, years after years sleeping in these cell-like rooms. Nothing to see there, its expanse blank and unremarkable, like a stony face staring him down.

Stacker closed his eyes, knowing it was futile to try to sleep, fighting the urge to will himself to sleep. That never worked, he’d learned, trying to force oneself to relax. A contradiction that couldn’t resolve. Still, his eyelids blocked out the dim light of the room, cast from the ready light in the corner, letting him swim in darkness. It felt a bit like wading in water. Moving, and moving, fighting a heavy resistance against his legs, like the first time you tried to walk a jaeger.

God, it had been so long. And he missed it more than he’d missed anything in his life: in the jaeger, you felt powerful, you felt confident, you felt you knew what needed to be done and you could do it.

He wished he felt any of that anymore, but every time there was a breach, he felt it slip further and thinner, more indictinct, like some kind of a mirage.

The good old days weren’t always so good, but at least they had good moments.

He felt his breath leave him in a rush, as though he was falling free of it, sinking out of his body. Sleep? No, it wasn’t that. It was too fast, too abrupt, and reminded him too much of…

…a neural handshake.

He could see a different place, now, daylight stretching a giant's hand of amber thick fingers across a whitewashed wall, and he got the sense of it crawling, inching along for hours, and he got the feeling of lethargy and weakness, a kind of exhaustion beyond what he knew from jaegers.

“Tamsin.” He didn’t know if he said her name aloud, in his shatterdome, where he was Stacker Pentecost, PPDC Marshal, or if it was just in his mind, in the Drift.

He felt a flicker of something, like warmth but not. It was Tamsin: he’d recognize her anywhere, the feel of her, a bright cinnamon flash and a sunny heat, a hard intensity caught in the corner of her mouth, the way the drivesuit wrapped itself around her sleek curves, curves he’d never touched, the mouth he’d only kissed once—a mistake, they’d both agreed, born of too much alcohol and too little common sense, but when do you ask common sense of warriors?

He wished he could kiss her again now, suddenly, wished he could feel her steady by his side in the jaeger’s control pod. But what he felt…was nothing like that. She felt thin and brittle and withered, and he could feel an inky heaviness in her body, scattered throughout, that it took a second to register as cancer—metastasized, dozens of tumors blooming malevolently, stealing her brightness.

He could feel that brightness fade, almost the instant that he felt her turn toward him, recognizing her name, recognizing the call of the Drift. He felt her reaching toward him with two spindly, wasted arms, a weeping sort of smile on her face, even though he couldn’t see her. She wouldn’t resolve, wouldn’t bring herself wholly into the Drift.

Or couldn’t, he realized. And it hit him: she was dying. Right now, right here, while he was trying to cobble together enough rest to be a leader tomorrow, she was losing today.

“Tamsin,” he repeated, throwing more and more of himself into the Drift, into his end of the link, throwing a stronger bridge of light toward her, like bright lifelines he only prayed she could grab.

“Stacks.” The voice was thin, as though stretched through all the time and space between them. And he felt her press against him, like a hug they’d never shared in life, and he could feel her regret and frustration, that she was dying and he was living, that she was helpless and he could fight. He could feel herself gathering to say something and he wanted to tell herself to spare her energy, save her breath for another few moments, however hard, at life, with him, the only union they’d have together, but he stopped himself.

She was a fighter, same as he was, and he had no right to tell a comrade how to spend his or her last energy. He waited, instead, his head spinning with all they’d had together and all they were losing, waiting for her to speak, honoring her with his silence.

“You’ll have to remember the both of us, now,” she said, softly, and he got an image of her and Luna, the first day of the war, when they’d all hoped it would be the end.

“I’m unworthy of the honor,” he replied, because he felt unworthy. But it wasn’t a refusal, though every cell in his body fought it harder than it fought the radiation, wanting to insist she wasn’t dying, he wasn’t losing another one, the kaiju weren’t stealing another life from him.

He’d lost a lot of friends in this war, but this was the hardest, because she was more than a friend.

“Win for us,” Tamsin said, and he caught a flicker of her old fierceness, a candle giving one last burst of bright flame before guttering out.

“I will.” But by the time he got the words out, she was gone, and he could feel the Drift unraveling, the strong bridge between them bursting into a scattering sea of stars, like slow, jeweled fireworks. They say the worst pain you can feel is your partner dying in the Drift: Stacker felt it now, like his whole soul was wrenched from his body, torn and flogged with some freezing fire, a contradiction that defied words, and the sudden emptiness beside him felt like a hole shot through his ribs, sucking air in great gasping heaves.

She deserved better, he thought, and he was suddenly back in his room, back in his body, feeling two hot lines of tears down his temples. She deserved a better death. A better life. They all did.  

But it was something, he hoped, that he could be with her as she died. And he would honor her last words with every last shred of his own will, his own body. They would win. He would win. For her, for Luna, for all of them. 


End file.
